Show Business: Frankie in Madison

The good news flashed through Madison, Ind. (pop. 10,500) like summer heat lightning. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was coming to town to shoot a $2,500,000 production of James Jones’s bad bestselling novel, Some Came Running. Local businessmen came running with promises not to raise prices; local police pitched in to protect M-G-M props; the country club and five hotels and motels were turned over to the movie folk. Nothing so exciting had happened to the green, hilly little Ohio River town since P. T. Barnum brought Jenny Lind to sing in the Pork Palace in 1851.

Then Frank (“Lover Boy”) Sinatra, the picture’s hero, lounged into town trailed by a variegated crew of camp followers that included Leo (“The Lip”) Durocher, a couple of casual redheads, and a court jester named Mack (“Killer”) Gray. Less than a day later, love began to die between Metro and Madison.

Lost Weekend. Frankie Boy started the week by taking his pals up the river to the wide-open town of Newport, Ky. They ate dinner there, watched a floor show, shot craps, played blackjack, tanked up and sluiced back to their rented Madison home at 3:30 a.m. The day’s work was scheduled to start grinding at 6:30, and Frankie wobbled to the set on time. The script called for its hero to arrive in town by bus, and half of Madison lined the streets waving and cheering. Frankie appeared to be returning the greetings, smiling through the closed bus window. But back of the sound-killing glass he was snarling out of his hangover: “Hello, fat boy . . . Look at that ugly broad over there. Hi, you horrible bag.”

That night Lover Boy and his pals continued their short trip to a lost weekend. Next day, none of them was in shape to observe the niceties of small-town life. Frankie wandered into a bar, set them up for the house, then took his own beer outside. By the time he learned that carting drinks from place to place is illegal in Madison, the damage was done. “I teach Sunday School,” said one distressed citizen. “There are a lot of Methodists here. What a terrible example that man set for our children.”

Replaced Redheads. Time out for a squabble with Director Vincente Minnelli held up the picture for most of a day, but it improved Frankie’s disposition not at all. Hillside Hotel Clerk John Byam, 66, took a late-afternoon order for hamburgers for the Sinatra menage. “They called back and wanted two with mustard and one without,” says Byam. “Then they said they wanted four. Then five. I got a little flustered. A couple of minutes later, in walked Sinatra and Killer Gray. Gray called me an old bastard. Sinatra grabbed me by my shirt collar and started dragging me around.” Scared witless, Byam cried on the hotel manager’s shoulder and went home to bed. Not until week’s end was John Byam able to get back on the job.

After that, Sinatra’s social life began to calm down. He spent his spare time playing gin with his sidekicks, sometimes dropping hundreds of dollars before breakfast. The redheads were shipped home, and a couple of cornfed replacements reported. There were rumors that Frankie had heaved a beer bottle through a television set, but outwardly all was quiet and the rest of the company was minding its manners. On the movie set, though, morale began to crack. Heroine Shirley MacLaine swore she was worn out from “killing 3,000 gnats.” Said a sorrowful character actress: “This is a terrible place. It’s even too hot for sex.”

Saddest of all were the matrons of Madison. Some of them still loved blue-eyed Frankie. They were working in the commissary just for the kick of serving him, and they were still waiting for him to appear. “I keep looking and looking for him,” wailed the wife of a leading Madison merchant. “Oh, why won’t he show up?”